Friday, 16 November 2007

I have to say I LOVE frosty mornings and crunchy leaves, and the last two mornings have been gorgeous, but I learn a very good lesson about Shelties and their memories! yesterday I arrived at our morning walk clad with jumpers scarves and GLOVES ! mmm Todd grabbed a glove and I just laughed at him running round shaking it and tossing it up into the air, and then took it and had a beautiful walk amidst all the ice and frost and thought no more of it. This morning I arrived at walk clad with usual hat gloves and scarf, and as I let the guys out of the van Todd decided to run up to me barking and leaping up to grab my glove, I said no and carried on walking and spent the next hour having spoilt B*****d syndrome, cause he could not have my glove, so lesson to oneself do not laugh at a behavior that you do not wish to be continued ha ha ha saying that it is VERY hard not to laugh at him as he is just soooooo funny.

Tuesday, 13 November 2007

I have had a real treat over the last few days lots of agility practice, with all my guys.

Started on Friday morning with a lesson with Bernadette and Todd, negotiating cross behinds and sending OUT not IN lol lol and some seesaw work and also some targeting on the down plank of the dog walk, which I am pleased to say is going really well, I think one of my main weakness is actually thinking I am really consistent with my verbal commands but have realised that I am NOT !! I have written all my commands down and think that I may drop a few of them and hope that less is MORE !

Friday afternoon I stayed to do a training session with Bernadette Lisa and Nancy practising a USDAA Grand Prix course which was interesting and fun to run you can see the actual course on http://www.obayshelties.blogspot.com/ . I was really pleased how Jess ran this course, and her contacts were lovely, it is always pleasing to have good contacts when you run your dog somewhere different, and I had a lot of fun trying different handling techniques into the rigid tunnel.I put Corrie round the same course and she ran it really nicely, and I think that I am going to have a go at training her running contacts, as she really needs to be motivated to run her best and I often find to stop her on the contacts is a bit deflating for her, so I am going to give them a go, lots of hard work coming up to retrain them. The biggest treat of all was that Bernadette let me have a run of Zen, she is sooo lovely to run, and I am going to work really hard as I would love Todd to run like her, well one can dream cant one !!

On Saturday morning we had a puppy training session with Lesley Olden (Nedlo agility) arranged by the Sheltie club, Todd had a great time, and I was really pleased that he stayed totally focused, as he has not been in an indoor school before and has only trained with the most 3 other young dogs. We did some little jumping exercises and also some dog walk work which again was very motivated, and had some fun on a wobble board, Todd enjoyed catching up with his mates, Kizzy and Kodac and Karen Buglers lovely young pup, who's name evades me at the moment, there was a couple of other really lovely sheltie pups there too.

Sunday afternoon was a 3 hour training afternoon with David Munnings, with Jess, she worked really well and I thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon, the only downside of it was Jess can just be sooooooooooo impatient and noisy and by the end of the afternoon I was exhausted!! As the whole time she is not working I have to play with her or do little tricks to keep her attention, and people say shelties are noisy, Todd is no where as gobby as her.I am looking forward to this weekend as Todd has a puppy training with Nancy in the morning, so lets hope the weather stays nice for that, I will try to get some pictures or a little video to post.

Saturday, 3 November 2007

Without wishing to be a dramatist or anything, but Tikka was due to be clipped today and on my way to drop her off and do a puppy class with Todd which I was really looking forward to with Rosie, I endeavoured to join the M3 and within 20 seconds of being on it I screeched to a halt and the sound was deafening, about 30 seconds in front of me had been a huge crash,. I only had Tikka and Todd with me, my daughter was with a friend and the rest of my dogs were at home alone.

All the traffic came to a stand still and I was counting by blessings that I was going at a reasonable speed to be able to stop and not go careering up the back of the car in front, but also deep in thought about life, how scary it takes seconds or minutes and its all over ! within a few minutes of being stationary all I could hear is people complaining about the fact they were being delayed for one reason or another mmmmmmm the lady next to me said this is just ridiculous I was meant to be at the hair dressers 15 minutes earlier, and it took me back and I said to her, yes it is a little inconvenient but I think that I would prefer my hair to be a little scruffy than to be in the position of the poor people ahead of us in the accident, she didn’t seem to get the drift buy hey there you go, I could not believe the stupidness if that's a word of so many people stuck in the traffic they were walking up and down the hard shoulder with kids, dogs and the rescue ambulances and police were hooting to alarm them that they were using the hard shoulder, and there was a group of youngsters behind me playing Frisbeehellloooooooo for me it just made me realise how lucky we are and within seconds it can all change soooooooo sermon over but give your loved one a big hug today.